Monday, August 31, 2009

Interesting headlines in the BBC today, apparently the Scottish Parliament are going to debate independence (again)

An independence referendum and minimum pricing for alcohol are among the bills to be introduced at the Scottish Parliament in the coming year.

The Scottish Government confirmed they would be among 13 bills brought forward in the SNP's third legislative session.

Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the people of Scotland had a democratic right to have their say on the issue of independence.

The programme will be debated by MSPs at Holyrood on Thursday.

A referendum on independence was a key SNP manifesto pledge before the 2007 Holyrood election.

A year later former Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander challenged the SNP to "bring it on".

Personally I can't see this getting very far, not with the furore that the "Minimum pricing of alcohol" bill will produce (It might take the SNP a while to figure out that what they propose is illegal under EU rules though) Now the SNP have made themselves rather popular in Scotland over the last year or so since forming a government there so you have to wonder just what on earth they were thinking about producing a bill like this? It frankly smacks of political suicide, prohibition never works, never has, never will. You make booze too expensive and people will brew their own or turn to other (probably worse) alternatives. It also will make the political party pushing it very, very unpopular.

So, you have to wonder if the SNP are actually serious about independence, they say they are, but if they go about it this way then I have my doubts about there sincerity. After all the best way to bring the public onside with you for any cause is not to piss them off by supporting something that will cost them money.

It also seems fair to me that if the Scots are to be given a vote (assuming the bill takes form) on independence, that the English should likewise be given a vote too, seems fair enough to me.

Can't see the UK government allowing England to go on its own though.................

Sunday, August 30, 2009

nWell, it's that time of year when the multiculties declare to the world just how wonderful and vibrant "Inclusive Britain" is. Yes it's carnival time where the Afro-Caribbean community get to strut their stuff to the world.

Notting Hill Carnival:

Last year there were there were 220 arrests, nearing the 238 figure recorded a year ago And by the last night, there had been 160 allegations of crime, making a total for the weekend of 270.

Police had been on high alert after rival gangs taunted each other over the internet saying they would attack each other at the carnival. Two teenagers aged 14 and 17 were shot and another man was stabbed as violence marred the end of the celebrations.

Police estimated that around 4,000 officers had been present in Notting Hill over the carnival period. This included 650 British Transport police on trains and at stations using mobile metal detection arches.

Sniffer dogs were at 20 key stations which revellers used to travel to west London.

Public funding given.£401,390 ENGLISH ARTS COUNCIL!Police costs £3,000,000!£8.7 million pledged by London Development Agency and the Arts Council to provide a Notting Hill carnival Enterprise Centre!

Now I'm sure you could make a case that this was small fry compared to the one and a half million visitors the event gets and the event certainly has an international presence.

So lets all bear this in mind the next time some politically correct council decides that because of the "threat of violence" a St Georges day Parade should be banned. After all at Sandwell, there was not one reported instance of any disruptive incident.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

It is some way off yet, and assuming Brown doesn't manage to get himself declared Imbecile-for-Life before then, but I saw a poll in the Guardian on Monday (I know, I know - I washed my hands afterwards) which seemed to confirm an interesting effect I thought I'd seen in the past about the way the poll numbers have shifted.

Now the Grauniad has its editorial mainly concerned with the fact that Labour's vote is still going down (surprise surprise) making any claims of a "fight-back" ring hollow. Which explains their desperation in attaching all sorts of odious "real meanings" to what Dan Hannan has had to say over the last month. (I mean they must be desperate if they think a comment from Mandelson is going to do anything other than repulse people) However what I find most interesting is the 'change on last month'. The Conservatives, I think, got pretty much their current vote share in early 2008 and since then it's plateaued: Labour is still going down but the Tories aren't going up. So where are those voters going?

The Grauniad poll here shows the Lib Dems going up slightly - other polls I've seen suggest that their vote share is either going down or holding steady, so I'm not sure how much you can read into this. But what I find interesting is that the Other parties have got an increase of +2% over last month. Why, exactly? What have UKIP or the Greens or the BNP or the English Democrats or whoever done in the last month for that? Is it just statistical error? Is the Grauniad's polling service counting that good old British option "I don't know" as "Others"?

Obviously we can't trust polls, as only one really counts, though Political Betting are usually the ones I opt for, but ignoring that contemporary increase, I do think it's interesting that the Other parties' collated vote share is now routinely quoted in double figures. By contrast at the last election in 2005 it was only about 6% altogether. If 14% reflects how people would actually vote on the day, that could be a tectonic plate shifter. Granted the first past the post system means it's very hard for a minor party to be elected to Parliament, but it could still shift things considerably: for instance, if a portion of the Labour vote defected to the BNP in a formerly safe northern seat, the seat might pass to the usual runner-up a long way behind (the Tories or Lib Dems). Or if a portion of the Tory vote defected to UKIP in a safe Tory seat, and so on.

For me, the boring truth is the reason the Tories will win the next election* is the Labour electorate will not turn up. David Cameron will get the Tory die-hards and some independents and will win with that. The other parties will make gains but will be statistically insignificant.

*(Well unless Europe becomes a huge issue in the next eight or nine months and Ken Clarke says something which pisses off the anti-EU crowd. Then if everyone assumes a Tory victory there could be a protest vote for UKIP which would siphon off some marginal seats that would have gone to Tories but instead stay with Lab/Lib) Very unlikely...

EDIT: Just to clarify; that scenario is the most plausible but still extremely unlikely

The Telegraph reports that Shadow Europe Minister Mark Francois has said that a Conservative government would be willing to increase Britain’s financial contributions to the EU, in exchange for reforms to European farm subsidies. He is quoted saying, “If we come into power, we will be in the foothills of beginning to negotiate a new financial perspective that will run from 2014. Our view is that there should be no further reduction in the British rebate unless it is accompanied by really fundamental reform…The point of principle is that we would be very reluctant to surrender anything further of the rebate unless we thought there was genuine reform available.”

Bastards, why can't we leave, now! Why am I forced to vote for minority parties who represent the English as a whole when the big 3 ignore the wishes of the majority in this country?

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Politicians and the Police keep proclaiming that cctv makes life safer, that people feel more secure when they are being monitored, well people might, however the facts tell a different story as to how safe you actually are.

1,000 cameras 'solve one crime'

Only one crime was solved by each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city's surveillance network has claimed.

The internal police report found the million-plus cameras in London rarely help catch criminals.

In one month CCTV helped capture just eight out of 269 suspected robbers.

David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary, said: "It should provoke a long overdue rethink on where the crime prevention budget is being spent."

He added: "CCTV leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness.

"It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security.

You have to wonder just when the tipping point will come, when people will finally take to the streets and say enough is enough. I don't even think it will be a major incident, just a little straw breaking the camels back and suddenly the politicians and jobsworths will discover what people power is all about and who is actually in charge.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Amazing where your thoughts and conversations go when having a few beers with friends and attempting to put the world to rights.

It's not a joke, as they seem to be determined to do it some how or other anyway. September 11 and the various atrocities/attacks afterwards was a direct result of western interference in ME politics, specifically the continued use of US bases on Saudi territory, mixed in with the rage and humiliation felt by Moslems from Morocco to Indonesia over the current situation of the Palestinians. Indeed a lot of people (not just Moslems) honestly believe that the Palestinian situation does represent something more than a squalid border dispute, and believe that the problem represents an almost diabolical aspect of Zionism, which explains why a lot of people have fallen into the trap of believing anti-semitic fantasies about heinous Jewish crimes and world domination and can't seem to get their minds to think about anything else.

To go directly back to the ME you have the problem of Arab nationalism, this is a unique blend of 1930’s Nazism anti-semitism and Cold war Communist/leftist anti-zionism combined with a desire by the various tyrannical leaders of the area to unite all Arabs into one huge power block to challenge western dominance. Nazism was brought into the mix by the British appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, one Haj Amin al-Husseini, indeed he was visited by Adolf Eichman in Palestine and spent the war years in Berlin heading a Nazi government in exile and training Moslem troops in Bosnia in the art of genocide. Communism was directly responsible for the setting up of the PLO in the 1960’s and after the Baddawi conference (1973) headed by a KGB agent (Yevgeny Primakov) introduced terror as a means of destabilising the west.

This combination of Islam and Nazi/Communist Socialism is currently fuelling much of the present dispute in the ME and still draws western interference in the area through well meaning but ultimately doomed attempts to bring some sort of control/stability to the area. Such is this toxic amalgam of beliefs that Arabs see any withdrawal from this area as a retreat and Israel sees it as a betrayal.

This is of course only one aspect of the whole problem, there are Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians, Maronnites, Copts from Egypt, native Sudanese all with an axe to grind against the various regimes that currently dominate the area.

The only way out of this whole quagmire is to simply develop alternatives to oil withdraw all civilised forces and let them sort it out themselves. Take a leaf out of the French, German, Russian and Chinese books and sell them all the arms that they can afford because they are going to fight anyway. We might as well profit from their idiocy.

When the dust is all settled and the map redrawn then we deal with the victors in whatever manner they desire.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Ok, Every country has people leaving, and people coming. Not everyone is happy with his or her country regardless of where they are in the world; this is not something unique to England.

But was is clear is that large numbers of native-born English are leaving or wanting to leave England, is much larger then ever before and while I could not find proper statistics its suppose to be in the 100,000’s every year. And much higher per 1000’s than most western nations.

So why are people leaving? It is rather depressing when you think about it; I am sometimes left thinking I am going to be the last one left. Now according to some TV show on BBC 25% of all people who leave England return within 2 years but regardless of how many realise what a mistake they made the fact they leave says something.

I mean where did we go wrong? Has multiculturalism failed? Because if I am brutally honest fuck multiculturalism. Differences do not unite us, by there very definition they can’t. How on earth can we feel united or apart of a group of people who are so different to us? Now this isn’t a bash at multiculturalism but it just seems that even the basic building blocks of how our society works is failing and set to fail. If we want to feel as a group or apart of a group we need something that unites us as group, multiculturalism doesn’t do that, so its no wonder nobody feels England has no identity because the truth is it doesn’t anymore, because there is nothing that unites us anymore. I mean look at Canada and America, they handle immigration much better than England. Because they have forced their national identity on people coming into those countries and as such they all have something in common, which is the national identity. We don’t seem to do that in England out of fear of something, racism maybe.

When I sit down and list what is wrong with this country; I come up with something like this:Too many people, the division of the classes, high cost of living, working everyday just to chase the bills, the M25, no sense of wellbeing, feeling like an outsider in your own country, generally miserable people, driving anywhere, a government that finds a new way to grind you down everyday, the constant bad news, the 'English Pub' no longer exists, somewhere safe for my kids to grow up, knowing that however hard you try - it will always be taken off you by politicians, the lack of identity for the country we grew up in that has somehow slipped away, stamp duty, death duties, red-tape, people that win the lottery and don't do anything with it, celebrity fixated media, reality tv shows, road rage, air rage, trolley rage, price of fuel, antagonistic Muslim clerics, spiralling crime, speed cameras for profit, congestion charges, the price of train travel, the lack of manners or courtesy, untouchable criminals aged 9 to 15, public transport, the general state of politics all being in the middle ground, chavs, state spongers, corrupt politicians, loss of civil liberties, I could go on, and on, and on.

These are not all views I hold by the way, these are just reasons that people all seem to complain about. But when you look at that list, it does seem very overwhelming and how on earth would you even go around fixing it? Just through simply voting how on earth could one hope to even be able to fix half of those? It seems every half-arsed attempt to fix these problems falls flat on its arse. And it’s no wonder then when you think about it why people are........well jumping ship.

President Barack Obama has made an impassioned defence of health care reform but told Americans he would not use Britain's "socialised" system as a model.

It's been mildly diverting watching the current "witch hunt" as Labour turn their guns against Dan Hannan to try and turn the public's attention away from their own shortcomings. Unfortunately they've forgotten that public disdain for politicians means that the minute they got involved the cause died a death (bit like the unlucky ones that the NHS occasionally fails)You see, what Labour has failed to realise (along with a good few of Joe public) is that the majority of people don't love the NHS, what they love are the Doctors, Nurses, Ambulance Drivers, Radiotherapists, Ancillary staff etc who look after them on the wards and in A & E. What they don't love is the bureaucracy, the jobsworths, the parking charges, the denial of drugs because of expense (Yes Death panel was a good swipe at the quango called NICE) and the various other things that go to make healthcare in this country a slight tarnishing of the soul.

You also have to wonder which country Andy Burnham thought you were being unpatriotic about, because his title "Minister for Health" is a bit of a misnomer, he's actually only the Minister for Health of England as his portfolio only applies there and not in Scotland or Wales who have to all intents and purposes their own NHS's. No doubt he thought he was making a good point, but any left wing authoritarian really needs to avoid patriotism as their own shortcomings in this area really don't bear scrutiny. Is it patriotic to starve our troops of equipment when fighting in two conflicts? Is it patriotic to allow unbridled immigration? Is it patriotic to refuse democracy in England whilst allowing Scotland and Wales their own Parliaments as well as still allowing their MP's to vote on English matters?

When it comes to Labour, Samuel Johnson was quite correct, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

Monday, August 10, 2009

Sometimes those who benefit at England's expense seriously don't get it. Take this report from Ofcom, as reported in the Scottish Herald.

BBC and STV cut spending by 20% on programmes for Scottish viewers

Phil Miller0 comments

Published on 6 Aug 2009

SPENDING by the BBC and STV on programmes for viewers in Scotland fell by £13m last year, a report by the broadcasting industry regulator Ofcom has found.

The 20% fall in total spend occurred despite an increase in the percentage of money that the BBC is spending in Scotland for programmes that will be broadcast across the entire network – up from 3.3% to 3.7% of their total UK budget.

Culture Minister Michael Russell said he was “extremely disappointed” by the low level of expenditure on programmes for viewers in Scotland, and also by the low share of network programming made in Scotland.

Yet when you check what the report actually says is that £10.36 is spent on each person in Scotland by TV companies. The UK average is £4.99.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Hold fast to EnglandFor if England diesA precious jewel is lost foreverThis cannot beA land ruled by othersSmall minded men of powerWho tell us we cannot beRemove our rights of oldHold their nation firstAnd Europe second in their heartsThey seek to break usSet us against each otherYet we will not go quietly into the nightFor English we areAnd England will beFreedom our rightNot to be takenNever given upWe shall be freeA future brightThe traitors cast downEngland restoredHold fast to English dreamsAnd remember our nation fairFor when dreams goLife is a barren fieldFrozen with snow.

Monday, August 3, 2009

A Bedouin came one day to the Holy Prophet (sallallahu 'alahi wasallam) and said to him,

'O, Messenger of Allah! I've come to ask you a few questions about the affairs of this Life and the Hereafter.'- 'Ask what you wish' said Rasulullah (sallallahu 'alahi wasallam).-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q: I want to be the best of men.A: Do good to others and you will be the best of men.

Q: I'd like to be raised on the Day of Judgement in the light.A: Don't wrong yourself or any other creature, and you will be raised on the Day of Judgement in the light.

Q: I'd like Allah to bestow His mercy on me.A: If you have mercy on yourself and others, Allah will grant you mercy on the Day of Judgement.

Q: I'd like to be the most honorable man.A: If you do not complain to any fellow creature, you will be the most honorable of men.

Q: I wish to be safe from Allah's wrath on the Day of Judgement.A: If you do not loose your temper with any of your fellow creatures, you will be safe from the wrath of Allah on the Day of Judgement.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

One of my favourite hobby horses is the teaching of history in English schools; frankly it’s risible, quite apart from the fact that it is so blatantly twisted against anything English, or for that matter, "British". The state seems to believe that our history is so shameful we should not teach it to our children and some sort of multicultural mishmash should be put in its stead so our kids can be taught about everyone else's history and how noble and good they were as they struggled to overcome our evil doings.

The political classes obviously have a serious problem. They cannot see the facts for the ideology they wish to push. They refuse to recognise that, until well into the 19th Century British subjects were being regularly seized and enslaved by the pirates who operated freely under the flag of Islam from North Africa. Anybody ever wonder why the French attacked Algeria and annexed it? No, thought not, mainly it was to stop the raiding of the coast of the South of France and the disruption of trade in the Mediterranean originating from the various Bey's of this that and the next controlling the coasts of Algiers, Tunisia, Libya and the rest. In 1836 a British Fleet assisted in an assault on Algiers for just that reason, Algiers based raiders had seized one too many merchant ships under British Flag.

OK, so we turned the trans Atlantic slave trade into a factory style process - that is one of the features of the English, usually slow to get off the starting block on anything, we simply don't know when to stop. Ask the residents of Hamburg, Dresden or one or two other German cities. Take a look at the same morons now in charge of education and you will see the same thing at work. They have spent so long campaigning for their "cause" that they can't see it has gone far enough and that it should now come to a gentle halt and consolidate what they have - not strive for more.

However, one of the more stupid assertions made by the "beat Britain for its slave trade" is that the Army or the Navy was engaged in capturing slaves in West Africa. If these morons knew their history instead of their prejudice they would know that the slaves were rounded up by locals who sold them to the Arab traders to their North as well. It was the Royal Navy and the Army that put a stop to the tribal wars that fuelled this from 1820 onwards, not an exercise in getting more slaves but in bringing peace to a region that had never had it! On the East Coast of Africa the slave trade continued in Arab Dhows well into the 20th Century, although, again, it was the Royal Navy that was hard at work to suppress it. Trouble was, being the other side of Africa and not affecting British shipping or people (except occasionally!) it was of little interest to the same bunch of wankers who now want our history suppressed. There is still slavery practised in the Islamic states, but you won't find that in any "multi-cultural" history.

It does worry me a lot that even today most of our kids either know so little of what really happened, or get their history directly from movies (Braveheart anyone) As a nation we can't really understand who we are until we know how we got here. This also goes right back to the claiming of the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights as British, because they aren't, they're English and have nothing to do with Britain as a whole despite the ludicrous claims of our current Prime Minister.